OTR – Ep 20 – Gennaweys Takeaway

On today’s special episode Kyle and Ken are joined by theme park historian and urban planner Sam Gennawey. He talks about his latest book. Then the guys geek out some chatting about urban planning at Disney World and around Central Florida. Sam tells some interesting stories that he uncovered while researching his books and gives his opinion on some local urban design topics including Celebration, Downtown Orlando’s renaissance and what he thinks it will take to make Downtown Disney a true success. Ken keeps bringing up the fact that Disney World lacks any true non-bus, comprehensive transit system. Sam talks about how Universal took as much market share as they did and where he thinks the parks will go from here. The Punch List is shortened this week but still includes Ken and Kyle discussing Meg Crofton’s retirement announcement, WestGate’s new steak house plus the SunRail announcement to run a late night train.

Sam- “The battle now for them (Walt Disney World) is to keep what they can have. I don’t its to expand market share any more. I think that horse has left that barn. They’re always going to have less in the way of market share.”

“We love the Theme Park business. We think there’s a real opportunity to increase the pace of new attractions. We have far too few hotel rooms in Orlando and the one thing we know, when people stay in our hotels, they stay – they visit our parks an extra day or two – and so we have 2,400 hotel rooms. We think we have room and capacity for 10,000 hotel rooms. So you’ll see us add attractions at a more rapid rate, add hotel rooms at a more rapid rate, and we think the returns in that business are great and there’s great running room.”

“In terms of hotels, we have 2,400 rooms now. We’ll open another 1,800 rooms with our partner Loews next spring in advance of Harry Potter and I think you’ll see us open hotels. We’ve done a study that says that we could have as many as 10,000 or 15,000 hotel rooms and still have occupancy that makes those rooms profitable. And all of the people staying in those hotels would be more likely to go to our theme parks. So, I think strategically we need to get those hotel rooms open and build out the resort, but I think about a $500 million annual capital spend is necessary to increase our growth rate and keep that business moving.” –Steve Burke in the BOA/Merrill Lynch Investors Conference. Sept 11, 2013

KLStorey

Ken Storey has been blogging about life in Central Florida for the past 12 years. As a 2nd generation Central Floridian he has a passion for and connection with the region. In his spare time he enjoys visiting low budget roadside attractions, Taco Bell, and typically plans road trips with as little interstate time as possible.